Dethrone television from the citadel of your daily regiment and replace it with the Bhagavad-Gita As It Is!
Dethrone television from the citadel of your daily regiment and replace it with the Bhagavad-Gita As It Is!
Ananta Gauranga Das: As the taxi got closer, I got deafer. The speakers roared, “I like big butts and I cannot lie, all the other brothers can’t deny.” Being a member of the Hare Krishnas, I practice renunciation, whereby nothing is falsely given up but rather everything is used in the Lord’s service. Could I link such vulgarity to spirituality? Then it dawned on me, using the tune still reverberating within my mind, I revised the lyrics to “I like big books and I cannot lie, all the other brothers can’t deny.” If you don’t already know, we certainly do have voluminous books and we are big on their distribution. Big butts are not the theme of this article rather, the devolution of reading. Alas I live in a generation that’s witnessed book worms mutate to “book face,” I mean Facebook. In short it’s not that we are not readers, it’s just the mechanisms of reading have transmuted. It’s kinda similar to the way chipboard looks like oak, but is not. My observation however is that social media is not the problem, rather our misfortunes are sowed from the seeds of a greed driven economy. The manner in which we abuse and are abused by media is the cause of our woes. Humanity is robbed of independence and intelligence due to the addictive nature of television, Instagram, YouTube and tabloid magazines. These weapons of mass distractions are soul sapping, they hijack our creativity and the need for meaningful human interaction. Did you know that the pornographic industry makes 4 billion dollars more than Hollywood every year? Their tentacles permeate cyber space resulting in toxic audio/ visual material at the push of a button. According to Juniper Research, by 2017, a quarter of a billion people are expected to be accessing mobile adult content from their phones or tablets, an increase of more than 30% from 2013. On a cognitive level using these stimuli create the same chemical response within the cytoplasm of the brain as hard narcotics. If you ever had a thorn under your skin, you will know that you can use another to extricate it. So use your kindles, tablets, smart phones and laptops to infuse spiritual knowledge into your daily activities, in so doing, freedom awaits. We are afforded the rare opportunity to see through the eyes of ancient wisdom. So instead of reading the TV guide or another WhatsApp message, grab hold of one of Prabhupada’s books, which are infused with dynamic spiritual energy. Prabhupada has distilled the essence of the Vedas into the Bhagavad-gita, Srimad Bhagavatam and Chaitanya Charitamrita. Arguably his magnum opus is the translation of the Srimad Bhagavatam. The ability to discriminate between truth and the muck of falsity is awakened when one’s mind and senses have been purified through the revealed words of God. One then gains insight to interpret the world via the medium of knowledge generated from saints. In this way we learn to hear and feel the presence of God in everything around us. Here is a friendly challenge, a social experiment if you will. Dethrone television from the citadel of your daily regiment for seven days, replace it with Bhagavad-Gita As It Is. Take a personal inventory as to how this change affects your mood, energy and relationships. I think you will find that plasma screen, which is so close to your eyes is some distance away from your heart. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit,” Aristotle.